Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Seasons After Fall Review (XONE)

Seasons After Fall melds one of my least favorite genres,
indie 2D platformers, with a genre I love, walking simulators, to create an all
new hybrid exploration-focused 2D platformer experience that is right in my
wheelhouse. Featuring the cutest little fox that has ever appeared in a
videogame as the main character, and some spectacularly gorgeous graphics and
music, Seasons After Fall immediately draws you in with its presentation and
keeps you invested with fascinating season changing puzzle solving and
exploration. It isn’t a challenging game, and there isn’t any combat, but it is
a beautiful overall experience that players of the right mindset shouldn’t pass
up. Continue reading our full Xbox One review of Seasons After Fall for all of
the details.

Seasons After Fall is the tale of a forest where a dark
secret is lurking just out of sight. You play as a spirit that takes over the
body of a wild fox and your job is to locate the four guardians of the forest
that control the seasons so you can borrow their powers and use them to
discover what is behind the pall of evil invading the forest.

What sets Seasons After Fall apart from other similar
experiences, like Ori and the Blind Forest for example, is that there aren’t
any enemies or any combat or really any threats to you. It is purely an
exploration and puzzle-solving game where the thrill of exploration and soaking
up all of the natural beauty the game has to offer is where the enjoyment comes
from. I’m personally a big fan of this type of experience – I love nature games
like The Deer God or walking sims like Firewatch – but I am well aware it won’t
appeal to everyone.

If you are one of the types of folks who can enjoy the
simple pleasures of romping through a forest as a cute little fox, Seasons
After Fall is a pretty fantastic 2D exploration game. The controls are very
simple, just moving around with the left stick, jumping with the “A” button, and
using the “X” button to make the fox yip and bark. Movement feels pretty good,
though the fox turns around a tad slower than I’d like. The jumping and
platforming isn’t super precise, either, but it doesn’t need to be.

The real focus of the gameplay is using your collected
powers of the seasons to change the forest around you in order to solve
puzzles. Each season has different effects – winter freezes over lakes so you
can cross them, summer lets you grow trees, mushroom platforms appear in the
fall, etc. – and drastically changes the way you explore the levels. You can
change seasons at any time and some puzzles require multiple steps / seasons to
overcome, which is very cool. Nothing in the game is particularly challenging
or taxing, but seeing the different ways you can use your powers to solve the
puzzles never ceases to be interesting as there is a surprising variety to
things once you get deeper into the game.

My only real complaint is that, because there isn’t any real
danger or enemies to worry about, having to backtrack through the same areas
can be a bit of a drag. Once you get all of the season powers the game opens up
in a sort of almost Metroidvania design where you have to criss cross back and
forth the map to collect items in newly opened areas, and seeing the same stuff
with no stakes causes the charm of bounding around as a fox between waypoints
to wear thin after a while. Not a huge problem or anything, but something
you’ll definitely notice.

What really makes everything come together into something
special in Seasons After Fall is the presentation. The visuals are absolutely
fantastic and have a hand-painted look to them that is just awesome. The fox
also looks great and is very cute, though I wish the animation was a little
smoother and there was more of it as some of the movements are somewhat stiff.
The music is also very, very good with a perfectly matched score and the little
sound effects, particularly the fox’s yips, are excellent.

All in all, Seasons After Fall is a beautiful and worthwhile
experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. It likely won’t appeal to gamers that
need action and excitement and enemies to kill, but if you can appreciate the
serenity of nature and the simple joys of guiding a cute little fox through it,
Seasons After Fall is well worth a look. I hate to say things like this, and I
know indie devs hate hearing it, but the $20 price is probably a little steep,
so maybe wait for a sale. It definitely deserves your attention when it reaches
a price you’re comfortable with, though.